A simple pendulum has two equilibrium points: hanging in the "down" position and perfectly inverted in the "up" position. While the "down" position is a stable equilibrium, the inverted position is ...

Once you step into the world of controls, you quickly realize that controlling even simple systems isn’t as easy as applying voltage to a servo. Before you start working on your own bipedal robot or ...

Mobile inverted pendulum (MIP) systems, typified by two-wheeled self-balancing robots and emerging wheel-legged platforms, present intrinsically unstable, underactuated dynamics that demand ...

Rosie, the housekeeper from The Jetsons, has been the archetypal representative of helper robots since she wheeled onto televisions screens in the early 1960s. While Rosie vacuumed and washed dishes ...

Apparently, balancing a pole on top of a flying quadrocopter robot wasn't challenging enough for the researchers at ETH Zurich's Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control. Their latest project has two ...

Researchers have demonstrated a way to maintain an unstable quantum system by applying bursts of microwave radiation. The technique is comparable to methods used for controlling an inverted pendulum ...